Reflective Statement: Adenese

Reflective Statement: Adenese

By Richard Xiao

When reading Adenese’s poems, I only thought about the concrete meaning of the poem and did not take into account the themes, motifs and other literary elements in them. The interactive oral managed to deepen my understanding of Adenese’s poems on an interpretive level. Not only that but I managed to learn about Adenese’s cultural and physical background as well as how he implemented these elements into his poems.

  Religion is one of these motifs in Adenese’s poems. Many of his poems show this particular aspect. The reason for this can allude to how Adenese was born to a very religious family. In fact, his own name was mentioned in the Torah. Religion is always present in his poems, no matter how little it is mentioned. In “Banished”, the people were living in horrible conditions because the civil war drove these people out. However, the war was caused by religious differences, which was an indirect cause of how these people were exiled. Not to mention “Elegy of Exile” threw in an allusion to the Christ figure and “The Wound” tells how a war is caused by religious conflicts.

Adenese displays conflict in his poems as well. There were many poems in which Adenese put in some sort of clash. In “Desert”, Adenese highlights the devastation that war causes by putting details of desolation and gruesomeness, one of which was called “War”, which shows the dismal and grim mood that war creates, as well as many mentions of violence and human body parts scattered everywhere in the poem. Also in “A Coat”, it shows two differing attitudes and treatments of a coat. One shows how the coat is treated with love, care and fidelity whereas another aspect shows the coat thrown abandoned and uncared for. “Celebrating Death” shows another set of conflicting ideals; water and mirage both go against each other since water represents reality and mirage represents a dreamlike state in which nothing adheres to the rules of reality.